Bulgarian cabinet proposes new head of State Agency for National Security
Bulgaria’s cabinet nominated former deputy interior minister Dimitar Georgiev as the new head of the State Agency for National Security (SANS).
The nomination, made at a regular cabinet meeting on March 18, will be forwarded to President Rossen Plevneliev, who as head of state decrees the appointment of the head of SANS.
It was widely expected that Plevneliev would endorse the cabinet’s recommendation of Georgiev.
Georgiev graduated from the Todor Kableshkov University of Transport and then earned an MA degree in economics at Neofit Rilski South-West University.
From October 1995 to November 2005, he was an intelligence agent and later an inspector at the National Security Service of the Interior Ministry. He was then appointed an adviser to the chief secretary of the Interior Ministry, with the rank of police commissioner.
Georgiev headed the International Operational Police Cooperation directorate from November 2006 to January 2011, before being appointed deputy interior minister, serving in that post until May 2013, when the first Boiko Borissov government’s resignation took effect.
From October 2013 to April 2014, he was a security consultant at Telenor, formerly Globul. He was appointed director of security at Telenor on May 1 2014.
The post of SANS chief became vacant when Vladimir Pisanchev resigned on March 6 2015 at the request of Prime Minister Borissov. Pisanchev became head of SANS at the time of the now-departed Bulgarian Socialist Party-Movement for Rights and Freedoms cabinet, being named to the post after the abortive appointment of Delyan Peevski as SANS chief, a move by the then ruling axis that prompted months of widely-supported public protests.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
